1. 11
CHAPTER ONE
The Process Flow Diagram,
The PFD
The Process Flow Diagram (PFD) is a highly specialized document that you may actually have
never seen. It is, nonetheless, critical to the organized, early development of any complex process.
A PFD is the fundamental representation of a process that schematically depicts the conversion of
raw materials to finished products without delving into details of how that conversion occurs. It
defines the flow of material and utilities, it defines the basic relationships between major pieces of
equipment, and it establishes the flow, pressure and temperature ratings of the process.
Project design teams use PFDs most effectively during the developmental stages of a project.
During these stages feasibility studies and scope definition work are undertaken prior to commencing detailed design. PFDs are closely associated with material balances. They are used to
decide if there are sufficient raw materials and utilities for a project to proceed. Within an operating company, a plant-wide design group and the site management may use PFDs to document
the flow of process materials and utilities among the different units within a facility.
There is no generally accepted industry standard to aid in developing the PFD. Consequently,
some PFDs show a minimum of detail while others may include significant detail. These two different design approaches are discussed below.
Minimum Detail Approach
For a PFD to be effective, the entire process is shown in as little space as practical. Only the major
process steps are depicted, and detail is minimized. The intent is to simply show a change has
been made or a product has been produced, rather than how that change was made. It can be
somewhat of a challenge to limit the detail shown on a PFD. For example, very little, or no,
instrumentation and control (I&C) detail is shown on a PFD, since this equipment is not critical
to the material balance. Nor are individual I&C components a significant cost component in the
overall budget. Valves and transmitters are usually significantly less costly than an associated pressure vessel. Details will be shown later on the P&IDs and other project documents. P&IDs will be
discussed in detail in the next chapter.
So, how do you decide what you show on your PFD? Well, if you are the I&C professional and
you are using the minimum detail approach, not much of your work is used at this stage in the
process development. One successful rule of thumb is to show detail on equipment only if that
information has a significant impact on the material balance, or if that information is needed to

2. 12
Chapter 1: The Process Flow Diagram, The PFD
define something special about that equipment. The term “special” here means
a “significant cost impact to the project”. If the information is needed to reach
a critical project decision, it may be important enough to show on the PFD.
Additional Detail Approach
Other plant design teams and plant owners believe a PFD should include
more design details. These teams and owners involve the I&C engineers early
in the project. The I&C engineers are involved in the development of the
PFDs. The PFDs might then include design details such as major measurement points, control methods, control valves, and process analyzers. The PFDs
are used as a guide, or perhaps even a first step, in the development of the
P&IDs. Details will be shown (or duplicated) on the P&IDs and other project
documents. P&IDs will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2.
A single PFD may contain enough information for several P&IDs. One rule of
thumb is a PFD may contain enough information to develop up to 10 P&IDs!
The PFD's purpose is to define the design of the process. Figure 1-1 is an
example of a simplified PFD. Completion of a PFD is frequently the starting
point of the detailed engineering of a continuous process plant.
Figure 1-1: Process Flow Diagram
3
TO FLARE
D-001
1
TO SEPARATOR
2
G-005
ISA COURSE FG15
STREAM
NUMBER
FLOW
DESCRIPTION
TEMP
PRESSURE
SP GRAVITY
1
10,000#/Hr
WET GAS
90˚ - 180˚ F
20 psi
-
2
1,000#/Hr
DEGASSED MATERIAL
70˚ - 170˚ F
50 psi
0.9 AT 60˚F
PLANT 001 KNOCKOUT DRUM 0-001
3
9,000#/Hr
LIGHT ENDS TO FLARE
80˚ - 140˚ F
4 psi
-
DRG #PFD-1
PROCESS FLOW DIAGRAM

3. The Process Flow Diagram, The PFD
13
A PFD is most likely developed in several steps. The plant owner may develop
a preliminary PFD, as a first step, to be used as a “thinking document” which
sets down on paper a proposed process or a process change that is under consideration. The plant owner may elect to use other methods to document the
work, such as a written description to define the process scope. See Figure 1-2,
Process Description. In either form, this information is used to establish the initial design criteria for the plant.
The PFDs, or other conceptual information, is normally reviewed by the
engineering contractor's process engineers and planning team before the
release to detail design. The review is to ensure two criteria have been met:
1. There is enough information on the PFD to support development of the
P&IDs by all the detail design disciplines. The decision that “enough” information is presented is probably best left to the design entity that will use the
PFD.
2. Material balance information is present to support, with the experience of
the project design and purchasing teams, identification and specification of
“long lead” equipment. “Long lead” equipment is the equipment that
requires a long time to procure, design, fabricate and ship. In other words, it
is equipment that has to be purchased early in the project.
PFDs developed by a plant owner will likely be re-drawn by the engineering
team. The new version will include the information needed by the design team.
The owner will put a lot of effort and invest a great deal of time, money and
expertise in the project before any PFD is developed. The following is a simplified look at steps the owner will take.
Figure 1-2: Process Description
A project may start with a gleam in
• Process Description Plant 001 Knockout Drum D-001
someone's eye or a voice in the middle
of the night. We could sell a lot more
- The inlet gas, which consists of mixed petroleum liquids and
vapors, originates in various sections of the plant and is piped to
product if we had a new, more efficient
the knockout drum, D-001, where liquids and vapors are
plant. We could sell a new product like
separated by expansion and a slow-down of velocity.
soap, or paint, or sodium bicarbonate, or
- The mixed petroleum liquids are pumped to the separator and
tissue, or toluene di-isocyanate, or comvapors are routed to the flare.
puter chips provided we could produce it
- The incoming material is normally 10% condensate, but under
in a cost-effective way. We could use a
some conditions, condensables may be reduced substantially.
new plant, a new process, new materials,
- The wet gas will vary in temperature from a low of 90°F to a
or different techniques. We could make
high of 180°F.
our product better, or cheaper. We could
reduce pollution, or have fewer by-products. We could make our product more profitable with higher quality. The
gleam in the eye is then turned over to a team for further development.

4. 14
Chapter 1: The Process Flow Diagram, The PFD
The team will include company managers and specialists, such as consultants,
engineers, real estate advisors, purchasing managers, marketing teams, sales
experts, and other support personnel. The team develops, at the least, a general
size and location for the plant, a marketing plan for the product, and a financial plan to establish and control costs. A preliminary process is defined with a
PFD, and the source and costs of the raw materials are determined.
If all this information is favorable, company executives would likely decide to
build a plant to make a specified number of units per year, using the best
existing technology. The plan would possibly specify that the plant be located
where raw materials, electricity, water and an intelligent labor force are available. The plan would have costs defined and escalation calculated for the project's duration. The cost plan would include the production yield forecasts as
well as the planned cost of the raw materials, combined and massaged to provide a unit cost and margin for the units sold. The plan would ultimately
project the return on investment (ROI) for the project, which hopefully will be
above the company threshold for new projects. If there is little return on the
investment, or if it is below the company threshold, the project is simply not
going to be approved.
Planning continues after the decision is made to proceed with the project.
Next, the executive team will secure the necessary land, and a set of scope definition documents will be completed. These will serve as the starting point for
the detailed engineering. An initial or preliminary
The Design Team
PFD, or other process description developed by the
Whether a contractor develops the design, or it is done in-house,
owner's engineers or consultants, is included in
the work is done by an engineering design team, consisting of
these scope documents. Many firms use indemany specialty groups. A typical team will be led by a project engipendent engineering contractors for the detailed
neer or engineering manager and it might consist of the following
design groups:
engineering. Other firms have in-house capabilities
and staff and prefer to do the detailed engineering
Civil
Process
design themselves.
Electrical
Project
Instrumentation and Control
Structural
Mechanical Equipment
Vessels
Plant Design/Piping
The design team is a part of the total organization necessary to
manage the design and construction of a facility. One common
term for the scope of the total organization is EPC: Engineering Procurement - Construction. Some owners hire contractors for
some or all of the three parts, while others handle all three
themselves. The owner's project manager has overall control of
the project. The project manager may also have additional staff to
handle other functions, such as cost engineering, estimation and
legal. Contractors may also use a project manager to control
their portion of the project, if they have responsibilities other than
engineering.
If an independent engineering contractor is to be
used, the owner will use the scope documents to aid
in securing the contractor's services through competitive bidding or by other selection processes.
A typical preliminary PFD, or process description,
will show the product manufactured by the plant; raw
materials necessary for that product; by-products produced by the process; waste materials that must be
disposed of; process pressures, temperatures, and
flows needed to produce the product; and major
equipment needed. The important piping runs are
shown, but piping is not sized on a PFD, and auxil-

5. The Process Flow Diagram, The PFD
15
Figure 1-3: PFD Equipment Symbols
Subgroup: Storage
Symbol Name: Atmospheric Tank
Symbol Mnemonic: ATNK
Description: A tank for material stored under atmospheric
pressure.
Subgroup: Process
Symbol Name: Distillation Tower
Symbol Mnemonic: DTWR
Description: A packed or trayed distillation tower used for
separation. Packing or trays may be shown to indicate type of
distillation tower.
Subgroup: N/A
Symbol Name: Exchanger
Symbol Mnemonic: XCHG
Description: Heat transfer equipment. An alternative
symbol is depicted.
Alternate
iary and utility piping are not shown. A written description of the process may
also be included, perhaps to emphasize certain critical characteristics of the
process.
The PFD will use symbols and letter designations to identify the equipment on
the PFD. It is not necessary to add much detail to the equipment shown on a
PFD. A simple line sketch will serve. For instance, a heat exchanger can be
shown as a simple line representation of a main process flow and a heat transfer
medium flow, without implying a particular type of exchanger. For a PFD, the
only information needed is that a piece of equipment transfers heat at that
point, rather than showing specifically the mechanism for transfer. For a few
typical PFD symbols for equipment, see Figure 1-3.
Some projects might identify equipment by using the Symbol Mnemonics
shown on Figure 1-3: VSSL for vessels, DTWR for distillation towers, ATNK
From ISA-5.5
Subgroup: Process
Symbol Name: Vessel
Symbol Mnemonic: VSSL
Description: A vessel or separator. Internal details may be shown
to indicate type of vessel. Can also be used as a pressurized
vessel in either a vertical or horizontal arrangement.

6. 16
Chapter 1: The Process Flow Diagram, The PFD
for atmospheric tank, and XCHG for exchanger. Other projects might use a
single letter for identification: such as, C for columns and tanks, D for drums
and vessels, E for heat exchangers and coolers, and G for pumps. There are
many variations of the letters and symbols used. It is very important to be consistent throughout a project, and almost as important to use symbols familiar to
those who will use them.
The successful engineering contractor for the project will review and probably
revise or replace the owner's PFD, or process definition, with a new PFD using
the contractor's standards. It is likely to be more efficient for the contractor to
redraw the PFDs to take advantage of their “standardized” symbol and drawing
development features inherent in the contractor's computer-aided drafting
(CAD) package.
Process flow data and conditions are provided on the PFD. These conditions
are normally the “design” conditions, but — if it is important to the material
balance or equipment sizing — normal or operating conditions, maximum
conditions, and even minimum conditions may be provided. Since the PFD is
tied closely to the material balance, mass flow units are normally used. Additionally, pressure and temperature conditions are provided as well.
There are two common ways to show the process information. One is to provide a set of numbers above, and possibly below, the line connecting equipment, using a standard format: flow/pressure/temperature. Delimiters are used
between the conditions. Units are not provided normally to conserve space.
The units are standardized and are provided in a legend sheet. The flow conditions are those upon which the project is based, the equipment is purchased,
and the piping is sized later in the design process.
Another useful way to document process conditions is to use a keyed table. A
numbered symbol — frequently a diamond with an internal number — is
added above a line or piece of equipment on the drawing. A table is then provided along the top or bottom of the PFD, listing the process conditions for
that numbered symbol. This approach has the advantage of simplifying the
addition of additional process conditions, and makes it a bit easier to maintain
data on the table.
As discussed earlier in this chapter, some engineering contractors or owners
include more information on PFDs than the minimum described above. This
should be agreed upon between the owner and the contractor. Arguably, when
there is pressure to add more detail to the PFDs, it may well be time to redirect
the design effort to P&IDs. Some projects may show basic or even more
detailed instrumentation and controls information. However, very simple symbols are typically used to indicate these devices on a PFD.

7. The Process Flow Diagram, The PFD
17
Batch Processing Plants Vary
Batch processing plants may contain equipment used in different ways, in different sequences - often for many different
batches or products at one time, or at different times.
The PFD defines a continuous process very efficiently. Batch processing, however, may require additional definition. A batch
process subjects a fixed quantity of material (a batch) to one or more process steps in one or more pieces of equipment. The
process takes place in a set of equipment defined in ANSI/ISA-88.01-1995, Batch Control Part 1: Models and Terminology as
a process cell.1
The process cell may be used to make a single product or many products. There are two further choices if the cell is making
many products. The cell may use different raw materials with different process parameters and either use the same equipment or, alternatively, use different equipment. Many process cells have the capability to process more than one batch of the
same, or different, products concurrently. A single PFD can define one process. In batch processing the PFD is often supplemented by a recipe, due to the complexity. Recipes contain five categories of information, as indicated in Figure 1-4, and are
specific for the end product.
Figure 1-4: Recipe Contents
Header
Administrative information and a process summary
Equipment Requirements
Information about the specific equipment necessary to make a batch or a specific
part of the batch
Procedure
Defines the strategy for carrying out a process
Formula
Describes recipe process inputs, process parameters, and process outputs
Other information
Product safety, regulatory, and other information that doesn’t fit in the other
categories
Figure 1-4 is from the book Applying S88, Batch Control from a User's Perspective, written by Jim Parshall and Larry Lamb.
The book contains a definition of a control recipe: “A control recipe is used to create a single specific batch…. Control Recipes
unique to individual batches allow product tracing or genealogy to occur.” 2
Some engineering contractors or owners use the PFD as a first step in
designing the instrumentation and control systems. Important process monitoring and control requirements are captured, as they become known. In this
situation, the process design team will indicate on the PFD where various
process variables are to be measured. For example, a circle with a single letter P
inside signifies that the pressure at this point is important to the process and
should be measured. Likewise, the use of F for flow, L for level, or T for temperature in a circle would indicate where these variables are measured. The
exact instrumentation and control systems required would be developed later
and shown on a P&ID.
Other contractors or owners might elect to show important, critical, or, most
commonly, expensive instrumentation and control system components. For
example, an in-line process chromatograph may appear on the PFD, either due
to its importance to the overall process or because of its cost. Other project
teams may elect to define process variable sensing points and show controllers

8. 18
Chapter 1: The Process Flow Diagram, The PFD
and control valves symbolically. PFDs are intended to provide a canvas for the
broad-brush artistry of the process engineers. The fine details wanted by the
instrumentation and controls engineers should be left to the P&ID.
We have not shown any instrumentation symbols on our sample PFD, but we
will discuss symbols and identification of the I&C systems in Chapter 2.
We have chosen a very simple continuous process for our discussion. We will
develop the rest of design documents for our plant in the following chapters.
The PFD for our simulated project is shown as Figure 1-1 and a word description of the process is shown as Figure 1-2.
The PFD in Figure 1-1 shows there is a flow in the process line, stream
number (1), of 10,000 pounds/hour of wet gas with a temperature between
90°F and 180ºF and a pressure of 20 psi. The variation in temperature is
caused by process changes upstream of our PFD. Note that only a stream
number, (1), (2) or (3) identifies the pipelines. Not included are line size,
material of construction, or pressure rating (ANSI 150, ANSI 300, etc) for any
of the piping shown on the PFD. Also note that there are no symbols or data
shown for the pump driver. Only its equipment number, G-005, identifies
the pump.
The wet gas goes into D-001, the Knockout Drum, where the liquid condenses
out of the wet gas stream as the gas expands and cools. The liquid is pumped to
a separator (on another PFD) where the water and process liquid are separated.
Stream number (2) shows the pump G-005 has a discharge pressure of 50 psi.
The pumped liquids have a specific gravity of 0.9 at 60ºF. The pump has a
capacity of 1,000 pounds/hour and the temperature of the degassed material
varies between 70ºF and 170ºF.
The light ends or gases, 9,000 pounds/hour and shown as stream number (3), are
piped to a flare, which is shown on another PFD. The pressure needed to move
this quantity of gas to the flare is 4 psi. From this simple simulated PFD we have
enough information to start development of the P&ID. To the project design
team, the PFD becomes less important as the P&ID develops and the process
temperatures, pressures, and flows are used to develop design criteria. However, if
it is kept current as the project develops, it may be used to familiarize the contractor's and the owner's personnel with the process. It is usually far easier to
understand the basics of a process from a PFD than from the P&IDs.
1. ANSI/ISA-88.01-1995, Batch Control, Part 1: Models and Terminology (Research Triangle Park, NC: ISA — The
Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society, 1995) p. 22.
2. Jim Parshall and Larry Lamb, Applying S88 Batch Control From a User's Perspective (Research Triangle Park, NC:
ISA - The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society, 2000) p. 48.